Former office manager of pediatric surgery group convicted of wire fraud

BATON ROUGE - The former office manager of a Baton Rouge surgery group has been convicted of wire fraud charges after she was accused of embezzling more than $430,000 from the group.

57-year-old Lorrie Rogerson, pleaded guilty to engaging in a wire fraud scheme to defraud the Pediatric Surgery of Louisiana group. PSL is a group of Baton Rouge physicians who specialize in surgery on children.

In April 2015, a review of the group’s financial records showed that Rogerson had accessed PSL’s bank account to make unauthorized withdrawals and transfers of funds for her personal benefit. Between May 2008 and May 2015, the Department of Justice says Rogerson caused unauthorized electronic withdrawals to be made from the PSL bank account for the purpose of paying her personal credit card bills. She is also accused of issuing numerous, unauthorized PSL checks for her benefit, allegedly saying the checks were for business expenses in the group’s accounting software.

Rogerson embezzled funds on about 256 occasions during that period, according to the report. She is accused of wire fraud because she used internet services in Jan. 2015 to divert funds from the PSL account to pay her bills.

“Insider fraud continues to be one of the biggest threats facing our business community. Together with the FBI and our other federal, state, and local partners, we will continue to aggressively meet and pursue this threat through federal criminal investigations and prosecutions. We commend the victim, PSL, for its cooperation and assistance in this matter,” U.S. Attorney Walt Green said.